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Global concerns for sustainable development, biodiversity conservation and Indigenous participation have led to the development of new protected area governance regimes. Such regimes do not however guarantee that Indigenous management agendas are achieved alongside those of the state, and are often criticized as a result. Within Australia, Indigenous Protected Areas (IPAs) are seen to embody the challenge of accommodating Aboriginal values, objectives and processes within management practice. IPAs promise much: equity and participation by enhancing Aboriginal control in management, recognising the cultural, spiritual and economic significance of land to Aboriginal people and greater support for economic and social development. If IPAs can deliver on such goals they can make considerable contributions to enabling Aboriginal landowners to achieve sustainable livelihoods. This research uses the Northern Tanami Indigenous Protected Area (IPA) as a case study to examine Aboriginal interests in protected area management. Specifically it asks what conservation outcomes are important to Aboriginal people in protected area management? Knowledge of Aboriginal interests in and processes for management will help improve the on-ground management of arid Australian protected areas by identifying the gap between local, regional and national management agendas and processes. Preliminary findings illustrate diversity between local, regional and national management agendas and processes. Aboriginal interests are motivated by cultural and emotional attachments to country, with outcomes that range from cultural to economic. National and regional agendas are driven principally by the need to curtail environmental costs and threats, and promote outcomes such as remote livelihoods. Better cross-cultural understanding of agendas and adaption of management processes are required if management is to be effectively sustained. This research principally involves senior Warlpiri women on the Northern Tanami IPA management committee. Two of these women will co-present by talking about their processes for managing country.

Rates of sexually transmissible infections (STIs) in remote central Australian Aboriginal communities have been persistently high for over two decades, yet risk factors for STIs in these communities are not well understood. This qualitative study explored behavioural and contextual risk factors for STIs in young Aboriginal people in central Australia. The study identified that casual relationships between young people are common and that there is a strong association between travel, alcohol and casual sex, highlighting the ongoing need for comprehensive sexual health programs that are tailored to the specific social, cultural and interpersonal circumstances of young people in this setting.

A retrospective review of coronal records was performed for 179 adult decedents who came to coronal autopsy in 1990 and who had been living in the Top End of the Northern Territory at the time of death. The directly standardized rate of autopsy-examined sudden death was 7.4 times higher for Aboriginal people than for non-Aboriginal people. Coronary atherosclerosis was the cause of 37% (14/38) of the Aboriginal sudden deaths and 52% (16/31) of the non-Aboriginal sudden deaths. Evidence of coronary atherosclerosis rose with age and was seen more frequently in those dying suddenly compared to those dying of external causes. When directly standardized, the rate of autopsy-examined sudden death attributable to ischemic heart disease was 5.5 times higher for Aboriginal people than for non-Aboriginal people. Contrary to a previously published statement, there is considerable overlap between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal heart weights, with 75% (55/73) of Aboriginal decedents and 84% (89/106) of non-Aboriginal decedents having heart weights between 250 and 500g.We concluded that the rate of autopsy-examined sudden death from all causes, and specifically from ischemic heart disease, was much higher in Aboriginal people. However in a case of sudden death a presumptive clinical diagnosis of ischemic heart disease prior to autopsy is not justified in either Aboriginal or non-Aboriginal people, due to the high prevalence of other fatal conditions. The diagnosis of pathologically increased heart weight, which is critical in the assessment of sudden death, should be made on the same basis in both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people.

Recent reports highlight an inconsistent provision of palliative and end-of-life (palliative) care across Australia, particularly in regional, rural and remote areas. Palliative care improves quality of life and the experience of dying, and all people should have equitable access to quality needs-based care as they approach and reach the end of their lives. A palliative approach to care is crucial in rural and remote Australia where there is a reliance for such care on generalist providers amid the challenges of a limited workforce, poorer access, and vast geography. This article describes the development and implementation of the Far West NSW Palliative and End-of-Life Model of Care, a systematic solution that could drive improvement in the provision of a quality palliative approach to care and support from any clinician in a timely manner, for patients, their families and carers anywhere.

In 1996/7 a need to address Indigenous Family Violence in the community and prison was identified as a priority in an attempt to stem the increasing numbers of people entering the prison system who were being charged with family violence related matters and the increasing numbers of victims reporting violence. The Office of Women’s Policy in the Northern Territory Government undertook this project in conjunction with the Commonwealth Government through Partnerships Against Domestic Violence. A program was developed with the assistance of many service providers and people with expertise working in the field. ## The original Indigenous Family Violence Offender Program (IFVOP) was piloted in Darwin Correctional Centre and in the Council for Aboriginal Alcohol Programs Unit (CAAPS) in 1999. The prison-based program continues today, but the focus of this presentation is on the programs taking place in remote Indigenous communities.

Fly in Fly out/Drive in Drive out (FIFO/DIDO) is a prevalent work arrangement in the Australian mining industry and has been associated with adverse outcomes such as psychological stress, sleep disturbances, fatigue, and work/life interference. FIFO/DIDO work arrangements have the potential to not only impact the FIFO/DIDO worker, but also the partner of the FIFO/DIDO worker. However, there is sparse empirical evidence on the impact of FIFO/DIDO work arrangements on partners’ sleep and subsequent performance. Therefore, the primary aim of this study was to describe and compare partners’ sleep quality, sleep duration, sleepiness, and loneliness when the FIFO/DIDO workers were at home (off-shift) and away (on-shift). A secondary aim of this study was to examine whether differences in partners’ sleep quality and sleep duration as a result of FIFO/DIDO worker’s absence could be partially explained through the presence of dependents in the home, relationship duration, chronotype, duration in a FIFO/DIDO role, and loneliness. Self-reported questionnaires were completed by 195 female and 4 male participants, mostly aged between 18 and 44 years and who had been in a relationship with a FIFO/DIDO mining worker for more than five years. Of note, most participants subjectively reported poor sleep quality, insufficient sleep duration, excessive sleepiness, and moderate to extreme loneliness compared to the general population regardless of whether the FIFO/DIDO workers were at home or away. Compared to when the FIFO/DIDO workers were at home, partners experienced reduced sleep quality and increased loneliness when the FIFO/DIDO workers were away. Secondary analyses revealed that loneliness may partially underpin the negative effect that FIFO/DIDO workers’ absence has on sleep quality. Further research is needed to understand the factors that contribute to poor sleep quality, insufficient sleep duration, excessive sleepiness, and loneliness of FIFO/DIDO partners to inform appropriate strategies to support FIFO/DIDO partners’ health and wellbeing not only in the mining population, but other industries that incorporate similar FIFO/DIDO work arrangements (e.g., emergency services, offshore drilling, and transport).

The study was restricted to communities of Triodia basedowii (hard spinifex) and Plectrachne schinzii (feathertop spinifex), which occur on extensive tracts of featureless sand plains. Measurements of plant cover, size, and weight were made at four sites at the northern, southern, eastern, and western extremities of their distribution as well as centrally. Soil profiles were examined and samples taken for laboratory analyses and nutrition trials in pots. P. schinzii communities are dominant north of lat. 22°S. and T. basedowii communities south of this latitude. The communities are dominated by the spinifex species, which make up 96 to 98% of the standing crop. The tussocks cover about one-third of the soil surface, the remainder being bare. A sparse layer of small trees, shrubs, and subshrubs is always present. The soils are uniformly red, deep, and sandy with clay contents exceeding 13 % only in a few northern and eastern soils. Nitrogen and phosphorus contents are very low and did not exceed 0.022% and 0.015 % respectively. Growth of oats and sorghum in pots was markedly affected by lack of phosphorus (nitrogen was not tested). The small range of available water is offset by deep penetration of moisture in the soils. The uniformity of vegetation and soils was the outstanding feature. Significant differences between areas were found for plant height (due to P. schinzii) and weight per unit area of stand. The latter could not be related to the climatic differences between areas, and may be an historical feature related to fire. The vegetation is a stable edaphic climax subject to and adapted to repeated burning.

Soil temperatures during wildfires are known to influence seed bank and plant resprouting dynamics in arid Australian grasslands. Nevertheless, relationships between soil temperatures and factors such as fuel load, fuel type, season of burn, time-of-day and soil moisture are poorly understood. This study used small-scale experimental burns to determine the effects of these five variables on soil temperature profiles (0–4 cm) during fire in spinifex sandridge country in the Haasts Bluff Aboriginal Reserve, west of Alice Springs. Fuel load and type were found to strongly influence soil temperatures, with soils directly beneath Triodia hummocks experiencing more heating than hummock edges or between-hummock gaps, and soils beneath Triodia hummocks experiencing more heating than either mulga (Acacia aneura F.Muell. ex. Benth.) litter or Aristida holathera Domin. tussocks. Season and time-of-day also had strong effects on below-ground heating, with soil temperatures remaining elevated for longer periods during summer compared to winter burns, and day-time burns producing higher temperature maxima and longer durations of elevated soil temperatures than night burns. Soil moisture also had a strong impact on temperature profiles during fire, with high levels of soil moisture strongly reducing the soil heating during fire. These results indicate that the examined factors will strongly influence soil temperature regimes during spinifex wildfires. Hence, they are likely to affect the composition of plant assemblages in post-fire environments through their impacts on vegetative regeneration and on seed bank processes.

Objective To estimate the incidence of sport-related sudden cardiac death due to ischaemic heart disease (IHD) in competitive young Aboriginal sportsmen. Setting Northern Territory (NT), 1982-1996. Design Retrospective case series with cases identified from Australian Bureau of Statistics cause-of-death listings and NT coronial autopsy records. Main outcome measures Circumstances and incidence of sport-related sudden cardiac deaths due to IHD; autopsy findings. Results Between 1982 and 1996, there were eight sudden cardiac deaths due to IHD and related to sporting activity among Aboriginal sportsmen aged 15-37 years in the NT. Six were associated with games of Australian (rules) football. All occurred in the Top End of the NT in the wet season, and all occurred after the first half, or within an hour of, a game. Four of the players had macrosopic myocardial abnormalities (hypertrophy or previous infarcts) on autopsy. The estimated incidence of I HD-related sudden cardiac death among Aboriginal Australian football players in the NT was 19-24 per 100 000 player-years, compared with 0.54 per 100000 player-years among Australian rules footballers of similar ages in Victoria. Conclusions Incidence of sudden cardiac death attributable to underlying IHD was extremely high among young NT Aboriginal Australian footballers. Prevention will best be achieved by funding culturally appropriate long-term strategies to reduce the incidence of IHD. However, in the short-term, community-controlled programs with education of athletes, heat-stress reduction strategies, and cardiovascular screening should reduce the incidence of sudden cardiac death in sport.

Seed-reliant, hunting and gathering economies persisted in arid Australia until the mid-twentieth century when Aboriginal foragers dropped seeds from their diets. Explanations posed to account for this “de-intensification” of seed use mix functional rationales (such as dietary breadth contraction as predicted by the prey choice model) with proximate causes (substitution with milled flour). Martu people of the Western Desert used small seeds until relatively recently (ca. 1990) with a subsequent shift to a less “intensive” foraging economy. Here we examine contemporary Martu foraging practices to evaluate different explanations for the dietary shift and find evidence that it resulted from a more subtle interaction of technology, travel, burning practices, and handling costs than captured solely by the prey choice model. These results have implications for understanding the roles of mobility, aggregation behavior, sexual division of labor, and seed use in the broad-spectrum revolutions of arid Australia and the Western United States.

Introduction: Understanding health inequity is necessary for addressing the disparities in health outcomes in many populations, including the health gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians. This report investigates the links between Indigenous health outcomes and socioeconomic disadvantage in the Northern Territory of Australia (NT). Methods: Data sources include deaths, public hospital admissions between 2005 and 2007, and Socio-Economic Indexes for Areas from the 2006 Census. Age-sex standardisation, standardised rate ratio, concentration index and Poisson regression model are used for statistical analysis. Results: There was a strong inverse association between socioeconomic status (SES) and both mortality and morbidity rates. Mortality and morbidity rates in the low SES group were approximately twice those in the medium SES group, which were, in turn, 50% higher than those in the high SES group. The gradient was present for most disease categories for both deaths and hospital admissions. Residents in remote and very remote areas experienced higher mortality and hospital morbidity than non-remote areas. Approximately 25-30% of the NT Indigenous health disparity may be explained by socioeconomic disadvantage. Conclusions: Socioeconomic disadvantage is a shared common denominator for the main causes of deaths and principal diagnoses of hospitalisations for the NT population. Closing the gap in health outcomes between Indigenous and non-Indigenous populations will require improving the socioeconomic conditions of Indigenous Australians.

This is the fifth report against the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health Performance Framework (HPF). The HPF monitors progress in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health outcomes, health system performance and the broader determinants of health. The health of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples is improving for a number of measures, although there remain many areas where further concerted effort will be needed to achieve improvements in health outcomes. Between the 2006 and 2011 censuses there was a 30% increase in the estimated Indigenous Australian population, which has led to a major reworking of all of the trends involving population rates. The other key feature of this report is that it includes updates for the new national health survey results for 2012–13 (the previous HPF report was only able to use data from the 2004–05 survey). Data for all jurisdictions have now been included for hospital data (the last HPF report only included data from NSW, Victoria, Qld, WA, SA and the NT). Data quality limitations and the small size of many estimates affect our ability to effectively monitor Indigenous health and the performance of the health system.

The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health Performance Framework (HPF) was developed to support a comprehensive and coordinated effort across and beyond the health sector to address the complex and interrelated factors that contribute to health outcomes experienced by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians. The biennial HPF report is the authoritative evidence base for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health policy and is well recognised for its innovative approach to combining evidence from national data collections and research literature with policy analysis. The HPF report presents a high level summary of data and policy analysis for 68 performance measures across three tiers: Health status and outcomes Determinants of health, including socioeconomic and behavioural factors Health system performance. Evidence from the 2014 HPF report is being used to monitor progress towards achieving the Council of Australian Government (COAG) targets for Closing the Gap in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health outcomes (and the factors underpinning these), as well as the implementation of the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health Plan. The reports are auspiced by the Australian Health Ministers’ Advisory Council (AHMAC), which includes representatives from all jurisdictions. Content is developed and coordinated by the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet in consultation with the Department of Health. For each HFP report, the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) has published detailed analyses of the data prepared for each measure.

Housing affordability problems have affected rural and regional areas as well as metropolitan areas. Responding to this problem requires programs, land release policies and local governance arrangements adapted to each local context. • Housing markets in rural and regional areas have experienced housing affordability problems. These problems are especially acute in relation to rental accommodation. • Poor affordability undermines regional economic development and exacerbates social inequalities, especially for Indigenous people. • Poor affordability in housing markets is driven by factors common to metropolitan markets, such as rapid population growth. However, it is also influenced by factors peculiar to regional areas, such as lack of scale economies and local geographic factors that limit housing development. • Government programs have sometimes been well understood where they have a high profile but have had uneven impacts between different locations. Governments have not been effective in releasing land and reforming local governance arrangements to improve affordability outcomes. • Government policies need to address market forces, address those that may be disadvantaged by change (e.g. Indigenous people), and ensure decisions about housing supply leverage local knowledge, such as through local government.

Treatment guidelines recommend watchful waiting for children older than 2 years with acute otitis media (AOM) without perforation, unless they are at high risk of complications. The high prevalence of chronic suppurative otitis media (CSOM) in remote Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities leads these children to be classified as high risk. Urban Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children are at lower risk of complications, but evidence to support the subsequent recommendation for watchful waiting in this population is lacking.

The purpose of this report is to describe the process and results produced by Ninti One through research to help determine effective support arrangements for Aboriginal people with disabilities living in the Barkly Region of the Northern Territory. The purpose of the research, which was commissioned by National Disability Services as part of a national disability workforce project, is to understand: 1) How care and support is currently provided to people with disabilities and the different roles played by families and services. 2) What people with disabilities think about the support they receive now, and what they think would improve their wellbeing if they could choose more support. This research aims to capture perspectives and insights of Aboriginal people with disabilities and their carers. It makes use of ethnographic methods, such as observation, case studies and stories as a means of exploring the lives, interests and priorities of people with disabilities and their carers in the Barkly Region. Specific themes explored through the research include: - The capability and situations of people who provide support to people with disability (ie are in a person’s circle of support) - The extent to which individual advocacy is undertaken or may be needed - The individual aspirations of carers especially in relation to employment, training or assistance with undertaking care. Overall, our intention throughout the research has been to enable participants to voice their own priorities, needs and stories. The analysis of the information collected in Ali Curung and Tennant Creek has led us to identify key themes that represent those voices in this report.

The value of programme logic models as a tool for planning, evaluation, and communication is well recognised. However, the value of its development process is less discussed. In this paper, we describe how we used a combination of literature review and organisational stakeholder consultations to develop a logic model for a telehealth programme for children in rural and remote Australia. Our aim was to use this process to further embed the programme within its implementing organisation, and by so doing to promote its sustainability and scale-up; a major challenge of telehealth programmes, especially those involving reorganisation of processes. Our efforts to describe the components of this complex intervention on the one-page logic model allowed for debates and discussions within the implementing organisation which then facilitated an improved cross-organisational understanding of the telehealth programme; a real time face-to-face (video-link) service which requires the reorganisation of existing service delivery platforms. The process helped to embed the telehealth programme within existing services. We conclude that stakeholder engagement in developing logic models can transform them from being only a tool that provides the picture of why and how a programme works, to one that plays a role in embedding programmes within implementing organisations.

Providing telecommunication services to remote communities of Australia has proven to be a challenging task both for the Australian Government and the telecommunications industry. Large distances and sparsely populated settlements have limited the deployment of current broadband technologies because of the cost and the insufficient return on investment to recover and maintain the advanced networking infrastructures. In early 2000, a number of different inquiries identified that the gap between the service provision in remote and metropolitan areas has increased and there is a real need for technologies that can provide broadband-type services to remote regions with low initial deployment and maintenance costs. The Sparse Ad hoc Network for Desert (SAND) project is an initiative of the Desert Knowledge CRC and the University of Wollongong. It started in July 2004. The aim of the project is to develop and provide cost-effective and innovative telecommunications technologies for the remote and rural settlements of Australia. In this document, we provide a summary of the achievements and activities of the project to September 2006. The initial focus of the project was based on developing cost-effective voice and data services for remote Aboriginal settlements. This included a major field study based on the telecommunications requirements of the Ngaanyatjarra settlements in Western Australia. From this, and an extensive desktop study based on a number of regional telecommunication inquiries, we identified a number of service requirements such as access to cost-effective and higher capacity data networks. We then studied the types of technologies that could be used to address the identified service requirements. This included a desktop study of a number of emerging networking technologies such as ad hoc networks and the 802.11 radio technology, and a number of simulation studies to predict their performance in sparse desert conditions. The studies showed that ad hoc networking technologies based on the 802.11 radio could be combined to design new telecommunications hardware to address a number of the service requirements identified. To further investigate this new concept, we developed a prototype networking device called Sparsenet’s Outback Phone and Internet (SOPHI). SOPHI provides residential voice and data service, which allows users to make direct voice calls without connecting to a base station. The voice service is based on the popular Voice over IP technology which is commonly used to make cheap long distance calls. SOPHI also provides a broadband data port, which can be used to connect end-user nodes to the Internet. We also developed a number of other prototypes to provide long-range network connectivity. An example is the High-powered Multi-radio Ad hoc Node, which combines the idea of ad hoc networking with high-powered radio devices to create a backbone network. In Chapter 2 of this report, we present the project background and a summary of our achievements to September 2006. In Chapter 3, we present the findings of a case study on Ngaanyatjarra settlements; the case study identifies a number of key telecommunication requirements in that region. In Chapter 4, we summarise the telecommunication service requirements based on our desktop and field studies. In Chapter 5, we describe candidate technologies for addressing the telecommunication service requirements identified. We present a theoretical study of the candidate ad hoc networking technology in Chapter 6. We illustrate the application of the candidate ad hoc network technology over various types of networking scenarios in Chapter 7. And in Chapters 8 and 9, we describe the performance of the ad hoc networking prototypes developed in this project.

The capacity and multi-hopping performance of ad hoc mesh networks in dynamic environment still remains an open research issue. Previous theoretical studies suggest that they do not scale in densely distributed networks. However, a study has shown that scalability and hence the multihopping capacity of mesh network is not only bound by the number of nodes in the network but also the number of hops. In this paper we investigate the performance of multihop ad hoc mesh networks, using both simulation studies and an experimental test-bed, and monitor the performance of the network as the number of hops in the network increases. Our results show that the drop in performance in multi-hopping is much more significant when the traffic levels are high. Furthermore our test-bed study shows that ad hoc mesh networks can maintain high levels of packet delivery and throughput when traffic levels are low, however, the delay experienced continues to increase after each hop.

Providing efficient yet cost effective telecommunication systems to Aboriginal people living in remote locations has proven to be a challenging task. This is primarily due to low population density and distance from major service centres. Extending high-capacity telecommunications infrastructure to these people would incur high costs of installation, maintenance and administration without significant financial returns. The cost of services such as cabled phone lines to all houses, satellite and wireless cellular networks are often unaffordable for people in remote settlements, and, as a result, the provision of telecommunication services is often subsidised by the government. New wireless standards and products are being developed which could provide broadband-type network connections to large areas at an affordable price. This paper describes these new standards and products and their potential applications in rural and remote regions. There is also a comparison of their transmission requirements, cost, performance and coverage with several currently available technologies.

This report documents the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Healing Foundation Development Team’s findings from a national consultation process, conducted from May to August 2009, regarding Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander healing and the establishment of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Healing Foundation. While the Apology to Australia’s Indigenous Peoples and its acknowledgment of the legacy of colonisation, forced removals and other past government policies was an important first step on the road to healing, it must now be followed by concrete policy responses — including the provision of culturally-appropriate healing services to assist Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people to begin the process of recovering from trauma. The research demonstrates that there is an overwhelming need among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people for services that are designed and run by communities to address the underlying causes of dysfunction in a manner that is holistic, safe and culturally appropriate. The international experience shows the effectiveness of this approach and its potential cost benefits. Participants in the consultation process agreed that healing is a spiritual journey that requires initiatives to assist in the recovery from trauma and addiction and reconnection with family, community and culture. Healing services must be culturally appropriate and take a capacity-building approach. They need to be multi-disciplinary and mix modern therapeutic practices with traditional methods. Healing services must also be available to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who are experiencing, or have experienced, trauma and its effects — particularly members of the Stolen Generations and their families. There was consistent support for the establishment of the Foundation, which participants agreed should have three broad roles: supporting grassroots healing initiatives by providing funding and workforce development; health promotion, education and skills training in the prevention and treatment of trauma; and evaluating and documenting best practise in healing. The overwhelming preference of participants was for the Foundation to operate independently of government. The most common suggestion regarding how the Foundation could become self-sustaining was through partnerships with philanthropic organisations, universities, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander organisations and other bodies. However, many also suggested that the Government has an obligation to provide the Foundation with ongoing funding. Participants agreed that appointment to the Foundation’s Board must be based on merit and by a transparent selection process. While board membership should be open to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people over the age of 18, consideration should also be given to gender, age and regional diversity and ensuring representation from members of the Stolen Generations.

A number of NSW Department of Community Service (Community Services) regions as well as several other government agencies have created their own practice guides for working with Aboriginal people and communities. In developing this practice resource, we have combined the best elements of existing practices to develop a resource that provides a consistent approach to working with Aboriginal people and communities. The information and practice tips contained in this document are generalisations and do not reflect the opinions of all Aboriginal people and communities in NSW. There may be exceptions to the information provided. As Aboriginal people are the original inhabitants of NSW; and as the NSW Government only has a specific charter of service to the people of NSW, this document refers only to Aboriginal people. References to Torres Strait Islander people will be specifically stated where relevant. It is important to remember that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures are very different, with their own unique histories, beliefs and values. It is respectful to recognise their separate identities. Community Services recognise that Torres Strait Islander people are among the First Nations of Australia and represent a part of our client and staff base. The Department’s Aboriginal programs and services are available, without question, to Torres Strait Islander people.

One of the ongoing struggles of indigenous people against colonization is to be able to exercise the fundamental right to represent themselves and to speak to the dominant society with their own voices and words, rather than to be spoken of or about. This essay discusses the mainstream academic peer review process and the suppression of indigenous standpoints by the dominant culture. The essay goes on to analyze the ways in which one mainstream international academic journal accepted and contained the expression of an indigenous standpoint by then inviting a response from a mainstream scholar who largely delegitimized the indigenous voice, at which point the inquiry ended.

This report forms part of the Mineral Council of Australia’s Vision 2020 Project – a project with the objective of addressing capacity constraints to growth that have afflicted the minerals industry in the past and are likely to return and erode Australia’s market share and thus visit opportunity costs on the industry and the nation into the future. The aim is avoid repeating the mistakes of past inactivity in building the social and physical infrastructure needed to meet the burgeoning global demand of the industrialising and urbanising emerging economies. The First Phase of the Project, released in 2008, examined the global demand potential for the minerals industry through to 2020 and assessed the supplyside requirements, including the skilled labour, needed for Australia to maintain or grow its share of the global market. This study, the Second Phase, examines existing and potential capacity constraints in ports, railways and roads; energy, telecommunications and water networks; as well as housing, labour and other social needs that affect the growth of the mining industry and the wellbeing and development of the communities in which it operates across Australia. It considers the potential for growth in 21 Australian resources regions under a scenario that broadly aligns with the Advance scenario outlined in Phase One and assesses the need for infrastructure to support that growth.1 Separate reports have been prepared for each State and the Northern Territory. While the main focus of the work is on the minerals industry, in some cases the reports for some growth regions have also considered the growth outlook for other industries. Expansion of the nation’s infrastructure (hard and soft industrial and community infrastructure) has not always kept pace with the rapid and sustained growth in export and domestic demand. Consequently, many growth regions around Australia now have significant infrastructure constraints. This in turn has reduced Australia’s ability to meet the global demand for mineral products. Other nations have stepped in to fill that gap and as a consequence Australia’s market share has fallen. This phase of the Vision 2020 Project lays the foundation for developing the policy and regulatory frameworks that will enable the timely provision of the industrial and community infrastructure needed to support an increase in Australia’s minerals production capacity. It is hoped that this in turn will enable Australia to rebuild its share of the global minerals market.

Indigenous educational and employment disadvantage is a much researched and discussed subject. The latest Prime Minister's 'Closing the Gap' report (Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet 2017) [indexed in VOCEDplus at TD/TNC 127.580] shows that, while the gap is slowly decreasing in regard to participation in tertiary education, reducing employment disparity, particularly in remote areas, lags behind. This is despite clear evidence that higher levels of education lead to higher levels of employment. This research summary provides an overview of the extensive research undertaken on the topic over recent years. It brings together the key findings to highlight current evidence on what works, with a particular focus on vocational education and training (VET). This summary is part of a suite of papers and interactive products that look at Indigenous participation in VET and employment, and other outcomes - from the data, research and policy perspectives. This paper provides a contextual background to Indigenous participation in VET and employment, with the aim of setting the scene for the research reports 'Indigenous VET participation, completion and outcomes: change over the past decade' (Windley 2017) [indexed in VOCEDplus at TD/TNC 127.09] and 'Enhancing training advantage for remote Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander learners' (Guenther et al. 2017). Excerpt from publication.